Hitchcock
by Dread Pirate
Summary: When a pile of bodies is all that returns from an Away mission, it's left to the surviving crew to work out what went wrong on the angry planet known as Hitchcock. Rated for violence.
1. Chapter 1

The transporter pad was littered with bodies. Riker, in the act of plunging through the door, almost stopped moving with dismay - it was purely the sense of Worf charging up close behind him that kept him moving forwards.

A pile of people, all slumped, some evidently bleeding. Tangled limbs. And an ominous silence, broken only by the choking sound of the transporter chief either trying not to cry or trying not to swear. Her lips moved once, pressing together as if trying to either form or hold back words. Worf didn't bother to try and said something harsh in his birth parent's language, very softly.

None of the people who'd come back from the surface of Hitchcock were moving, and there were no reassuring cries of pain to indicate life.

Riker shook off his disbelief as Dr Crusher and three medical staff swept in and past him to start triage on the scene of carnage. He didn't even consider interrupting their earnest, practiced work with pointless questions like "Are they alive?" or "What happened?". Save lives first. Ask questions later. He started to feel almost superfluous, and was sure that Worf must feel similar: but they couldn't have stayed on the bridge, not after that last communication from the captain before beamup. He wasn't sure how Picard managed it, though he'd seen it done a hundred times. The dreadful call, indicating disaster, then Picard's calm, controlled horror, and immediately following appropriate action. He always knew what was suitable for the commanding officer to do. And it probably wasn't suitable at all for the first officer to be here, kneeling in blood and feeling like hell, when the whole ship's compliment needed him to be strong for them.

_Picard. _Riker's stomach clenched like a fist. Where in this wreckage of an Away Team was Picard? Or was he still down there?

At that moment, the grisly pile heaved with a seismic spasm, then stilled again. Riker tensed.

"Someone…alive under there! Worf, give me a hand!"

Crusher's medics moved aside to allow the Klingon access without pausing in their assessment of the wounded, and Riker's heart sank as Worf started lifting aside the trailing arms of motionless forms, because one of the limp bodies was revealed as Picard, his normally hawkish expression slack and bloodied. And lying across the captain's twisted shoulder, another blood-smeared hand, the fingers moving slowly.

Worf lifted the captain's body clear, committing Picard to the immediate attention of Dr Crusher. Riker leant in, focussing only on the tiny movements of that hand. Someone at least had survived that bloodbath. He watched in unconscionable relief as, with another heave and brace of spread fingers, Data's bent head and shoulders appeared out of the pile.

_Data. Of course. _

The android was liberally splashed with blood, but more worryingly his arms were trembling as he tried to rise from the mess. Data never trembled. Riker bent to help him, and was in time to stop the android sagging back to the floor with a grip under the arms. _He's always heavier than I expect…_

He glanced up over the second officer's bowed head and caught Beverley's eye. The doctor nodded, just once, her hands flat on Picard's chest. The captain was alive. Riker's sense of relief surged once more. Things had not quite fallen apart. The centre was holding. _When the captain gets better, I'll tell him I remembered my Yeats. _

Synthetic muscle flexed under his hands, and Riker drew his attention back to Data. Doggedly, the android had returned to his efforts at becoming upright, and his movements were jerky and wrong. He couldn't seem to lift his head properly; when Riker managed to adjust his posture slightly so he could brace Data with his own upper body, it became very clear why. Data's right eye socket was an exposed metal ruin, a few lost blue sparks crawling sluggishly around the edges. The untouched left eye roved blankly over Riker, unseeing.

"Call Commander La Forge down to Sickbay," he heard Beverley's voice ordering one of her team, and knew rather than saw that the rest of the ill-fated Away Team had been cleared from the platform around him. The hum of antigrav stretchers and the musical bleeping of medical recorders began to fade away down the corridor. "Will," she continued. "Will. We need to get Data some help now. His leg - "

Riker, who had been able to look only at the eye in dumb disbelief, glanced down. Data's left leg looked almost severed at the knee.

_I once cleanly removed Data's arm below the elbow in an open courtroom, but now I feel like I'm gonna throw up._

The transporter room door hissed closed behind the last occupied stretcher.

"_Will_."

The doctor's voice was insistent.

Riker tightened his grip and hauled the android to his feet. Data dragged at his side, but remained balanced. A line of clear liquid dripped from his mouth. Gripped in his left hand was a short length of battered metal pipe, also slick with blood. Beverley pulled over the final stretcher and Will carefully lowered the android down until Data was sat, hunched slightly.

"Lie down, please, Commander," said Beverley, slowly, almost as if speaking to a child. There was a painfully long pause: then Data obeyed, creakily, as if bending was awkward. He did not let go of the pipe. The injured leg swung sickeningly in the air for a moment before Dr Crusher laid it straight alongside the right leg in a businesslike manner, and hurried out with the stretcher before her.

Will Riker stood in the smears of blood, running the toe of his boot through it without really realising what he was doing, because his mind kept coming back to the pipe in Data's hand. _And I really don't like the way my mind's working on this one…_

"No," he said out loud, in the empty room.

"Commander Riker to the bridge," came the call, and he wheeled and went to his duty, while at the back of his mind he knew he'd been down in Sickbay at the earliest available opportunity.

_Having that pipe tested to see whose blood is on it…_


	2. Chapter 2

**TWELVE HOURS EARLIER**

"It looks," said Commander Riker, leaning forward onto his knee with one hand supporting his bearded chin, "like a pretty angry planet."

From the central chair Picard's mouth twitched in an almost-smile. Riker had a point.

The planet hanging heavy beneath them on the view screen was called XR-891, but nicknamed in all Federation charts as Hitchcock: named for the first Starfleet captain to report back about it. The atmosphere was thick, only just within the M class limits, and pink, boiling cloud formations curlicued across its upper levels. The sporadically visible land masses were a startling red, glaring out from under the clouds and then vanishing again as if in an especially bad humour. Occasional flares sparked as debris from one of Hitchcock's recently exploded moons hit the atmosphere and burnt up.

It was certainly spectacular, glowing bright in the light of the double star formation a few lightyears distant: Pentagron Major and Minor, a red giant and a yellow star _- and_, thought Picard charitably, _could be easily described as attractive, like a Fourth of July sparkler_. But Deanna Troi, ship's counsellor, was frowning, and Riker had his own brand of instinct which had proven right in the past. Maybe Hitchcock wasn't friendly after all.

"Counsellor," he prompted.

"Confusion," she said, her own frown tight on her delicate features. "And fear."

"But not anger? I lose my bet."

_Good old Will, trying to lighten the mood. _Picard could almost hear the smile in his first officer's voice. But Troi wasn't to be dissuaded; her dark eyes were fixed intently on the roiling globe of Hitchcock, and she looked haunted.

"Still no reply from the colony base to our hails," said the voice of Worf, sounding, as ever, permanently annoyed. "It is possible that the interference from the moon debris has blocked communications."

_No help there, _thought Picard, and decided to take refuge in hard facts.

"Mr Data," he said, and the android at Ops turned his pale, inquiring expression upon the captain. "Lifesigns."

Data didn't even have to consult his board. Doubtless he'd performed this scan already: probably as soon as they attained orbit. But he hadn't blurted out with the information unasked, which was an improvement. "Two hundred and forty-seven individuals, sir, located at the original colony co-ordinates, clumped together in a manner suggesting a functioning settlement."

"Isn't that considerably fewer individuals than the original colony records indicated?"

"Yes, sir. Original records state three hundred and twelve individuals. Even allowing for a standard colony growth and decline due to births and deaths, it would be expected that approximately three hundred and six individuals would -"

"Approximately," interjected Picard, half-amused and half-hoping to forestall any further expansion on one of Data's approximations. Data merely nodded.

"I cannot be more specific. Human procreation and mortality rates - "

Picard waved a hand and frowned and Data, who was learning rapidly, stopped and turned back to his console without another word.

"Keep trying them, Mr Worf."

"Aye, sir."

Picard inclined his head toward Riker and murmured, "You were raised on Earth, as I was - did you ever see the appeal of a colony planet, Number One? A brave new world, unsullied, untried? A chance for a fresh start?"

"Perhaps," said Riker judiciously, "but becoming a colonist would be to give up travel for good, and I'm not the barn-raising type. I think you need a good dose of homebody to want to become a new patriarch. Especially on a world like Hitchcock. I read the files. This place is one small step above uninhabitable."

"A life on the edge…" said Picard, and for a moment his eyes gleamed. Riker, who never missed anything in his captain's demeanour, had a strong suspicion that had things been different, Jean-Luc Picard would not only have raised the barn, he'd've done it in a methane hurricane on top of a cliff.

_And then made a fire for some tea…_

Riker allowed himself a smile and turned back to the screen. Hitchcock spat and boiled below them, daring them. _That's why we come out here. To take all the dares the universe throws at us. We may not be building a new civilisation, but we're expanding the entire sphere of human experience. _

He waited in an agreeable fug of anticipation, and he did not have to wait for long.

"Number One," said Picard, "take a minimal Away Team and find out whether their barn's collapsed."

"Aye, sir. Worf, with me."

**

* * *

**

**PRESENT**

_And there had been nothing, nothing, nothing, _Riker's mind parroted at him as he stood in Sickbay, just as predicted, waiting for the results of a variety of tests. Nothing out of the ordinary. Or he would never have allowed Picard to go down there after him.

It nagged at him that he might be deceiving himself on that front. Picard had been able to bypass his first officer on a number of occasions in order to lead an Away Team himself.

"Three dead," said a voice at his elbow. Beverley Crusher looked weary and lost, laying down a knitter on a tray and not meeting his eyes. "Three stable, including Mr Data, if Mr Data can be described as stable."

"Mr Data can be described as not getting any worse as long as I'm here," said La Forge, without turning away from his work on the medical couch. "You can count on that, Doctor."

_I feel like I fell down the rabbit hole and came out in the wrong world entirely. _"What the hell happened, Beverley?"

"If I had answers for you, I'd've told you them. Did I mention that one of the dead was Ensign Hutchens and we only got half of him?"

Riker resisted a quasi-hysterical impulse to ask which half.

"He was torn apart, Will."

Riker gave that horrible information as brief a consideration as he could before forcing himself to concentrate on the living.

"The captain?"

"Doing well. Tough old bird," said Crusher, resurrecting her humour where Jean-Luc was concerned. "He had a broken arm and a whole lot of bruising to the ribs. Limited internal damage. My best guess is that he was hit with something pretty large and heavy. But he got off lighter than Lieutenant Redford. She's got a nasty concussion and a lot of cuts all over her torso, hands and lower arms. Something attacked them down there and it wasn't discriminating."

"Something strong enough to take down Data."

_That alone is a nasty concept_, Riker thought, turning now to the couch where Geordi was fussing like a mother hen. Data lay stretched out on his back, looking deceptively composed. His facial damage was still unsealed, but looked less horrific now it wasn't bathed in gore. Someone had also taken the time to clean the blood from his hands. His right hand lay open and pale at his side; but his left still gripped the metal pipe. Riker's focus of attention must have been obvious, because Geordi, glancing up, said:

"We can't make him let go, Commander. Not without breaking his fingers."

"I assume you've tested the blood on that thing."

"The doc took several blood samples from that, and from Data's clothes and skin. Easy to know none of it's his. We're guessing most of it's gonna be Ensign Hutchens'." Geordi, consummate professional and concerned friend that he was, never stopped working as he talked. With an efficient series of metallic clicks, the previously disengaged interlocks that held Data's knee re-engaged and clamped onto the struts from the calf. "Gotcha," said Geordi, softly. "If you were human, Data, you'd be getting one sucker of a case of pins and needles right about now."

"If he was human he'd be dead. What did this to him?"

"The damage to his face is mostly superficial." Geordi caught Riker's look and shrugged. "I know it looks bad. The synthoskin came off, sure, and the surface sensors were scraped off, but we've got a ton of replacements for those. The eye itself will be a little more tricky, but what's really got me worried is the power flow. Power from his main source isn't circulating properly. He should have woken up by now."

Riker felt that odd, dislocated down-the-rabbit-hole sensation wash over him again. Data, beaten into unconsciousness. Hutchens, ripped in two. Half the Away Team dead.

"Can anyone tell me when I can talk to someone who survived this, whatever the hell "this" was?" he demanded, more harshly than he'd intended.

"You can start with me."

Riker turned, and met the sight of Jean-Luc Picard staring back at him.

Picard's voice sounded as if it had been filtered through gravel. Propped up in the midst of a sea of attendants, the readouts above his head bleeping in alarm every time he moved, Jean-Luc Picard's face was ashen and his eyes sunk deep in their sockets. His gaze roved about the room, taking in the casualties and the empty couches all at once. He finally fixed his gaze on Riker once again and demanded:

"Tell me."

"Three," said Riker, softly. "Hutchens. Ailforth. M'Reva."

There was a short grace moment as Picard blinked, long and slow, and exhaled.

"But it wasn't real," he murmured, eyes closing once more, "none of it was real…"


	3. Chapter 3

**ELEVEN HOURS EARLIER**

"I must admit, it's pretty much what I was expecting," said Riker quietly to Worf as he pretended to inspect a raised bed of native flowers. The Klingon, whose hand had not once moved from the handle of his phaser despite the innocuous nature of their hosts, gave a non-committal grunt.

"I do not trust them."

"Worf," said Riker, smiling his crooked smile, "you wouldn't trust a Vulcan who was telling you the sky was blue."

Worf looked upwards, still frowning severely.

"The sky is not blue here, Commander."

_Can't argue with that, _thought Riker, glancing up. The sky viewed from Hitchcock was pink, a balmy, slightly sickly salmon hue, with scudding tendrils of red cloud. He couldn't help wondering whether it rained often and what colour the water was. Something Data would no doubt investigate with enthusiasm when he came down here, and Riker could see no reason not to allow a further Away Team, one with a good couple of scientists and a decent engineer. The only danger would be that Data might potentially talk one of the local scientists to death with a neverending supply of "Inquiry -"

As expected, the recent explosion of the nearest moon had caused a few considerable debris impacts on the settlement, knocking out long range communications and several of the original hydroponics domes. The settlement mayor, Stewart, had been so glad to see incoming Starfleet officers that he had actually clapped Riker on both shoulders. Worf's forbidding expression had forestalled any physical contact but Stewart had effusively welcomed them both to his town, which he called Anchorage. The town was showing the signs of its youth; the buildings were in the most part still the pre-fabricated panel dwellings and storehouses commonly issued to Federation colony ships. The inhabitants were also showing the classic signs of the early hardship experienced by settlers. All of them that Riker took note of as he passed were employed in some form of practical work, and they looked fiercely, well-deservedly tired. Hitchcock was clearly about as hospitable as it looked from above, but these people were thriving on adversity.

_And there's even a barn._

"We'd been hoping you'd come down when we didn't answer," Stewart said. "It's been a good few weeks, but we knew that when the moon exploded we'd be put on someone's milk run for a check-up."

"Well, the _Enterprise_ isn't exactly on a milk run," Riker said, amused. "But we were in the right sector at the right time. I can arrange for some of our technical crew to come down and help you repair the damage and upgrade some of your systems, if you like."

"It's just what we need. Thankyou, Commander, thankyou. Let me show you some of the sections that suffered damage and then you can better judge what you can offer us."

* * *

**PRESENT**

None of it was real…

_I offered up my captain, the second officer, our top hydroponics specialist and one of the youngest technicians on board because he wanted to walk on his first alien world._

Riker, staring at Geordi's fingers as the engineer fitted almost microscopic sensors into the surface of Data's gleaming exposed metal cheekbone, wracked his brain for the hundredth time as to what he and Worf had missed.

_No, not Worf. Can't blame Worf. I was in command. Whatever it was_, I _missed it._

Picard, after a brief but pointed conversation, had been sedated again, under far less protest than Beverley had expected from him.

"The settlement wasn't there, Will," Picard had insisted. "None of it. Not a building, not a settler, not a grain of wheat, nothing as you described."

Riker exchanged a brief, meaningful glance with the doctor over Picard's head.

"But captain, we have recordings of conversations you had with Mr Stewart from the colony. Before -"

Picard was nodding, almost impatiently.

"I know very well before what, Commander. And I am not delusional, Doctor, kindly stop hovering in that blasted maternal fashion!"

The medical couch blarted an alarm and a series of readouts shot into the red, at which point Picard's already alarmingly ashen face became drained white and Beverley Crusher, brooking no interference, reached out for her hypo. Picard's fingers snapped around Riker's wrist.

"Data will tell you," he said, as the hypo hissed against his shoulder. "He can't be fooled, remember…"

All of which would have been extremely comforting under normal circumstances, and indeed Riker would have given almost anything for the reassurance of Data's eternally calm, constant presence. But even Data was out of commission, and Riker now regretted his immediate, sharp order to La Forge and his team as soon as Picard had relapsed into drugged slumber.

"I don't care if you have to jumpstart him from the warp core, Geordi, get Data up off that couch!"

Geordi's startled, almost wounded expression had quickly turned to bitterness, ("Aye, sir. Working on it.") and Riker could have kicked himself. You jumpstarted a shuttlecraft, an antigrav stretcher, a starship. They were _things_. You saved Data's life, because he was a person. _You would think I__'__d learnt that lesson after what I put him through in Maddox__'__s trial. Strange how deep prejudices run. Under stress we always pick out the tiny differences for emphasis. _

He wondered if he ought to apologise, and indeed who he ought to apologise to, but at that moment Geordi abruptly jumped back from his place at the side of the couch and knocked into the first officer.

"Woah, woah, _woah_! Hang on, there, Data - "

Because Data was suddenly moving, with that superhuman speed his unassuming figure concealed, sitting bolt upright and lunging off the couch within microseconds, trailing diagnostic equipment and Geordi's technicians in equal measures. Riker found himself staring for a scant moment into wide golden eyes, one framed by shining metal. The techs were good at their job, and liked Data, so did not let go of the android's arms: thus Data dragged them down with him when his legs folded under him and he crashed to the floor.

Riker once again found himself staring down at the back of Data's dark head as the android failed to rise, and this time felt twice as bad because behind him, the somewhat sarcastic and aggrieved tones of Geordi La Forge were saying:

"Well, Commander…he's off the couch like you wanted."


	4. Chapter 4

"Take it easy," Geordi murmured, as Data was hauled off the floor and reinstated on the couch. The engineer gave Riker a warning look: _don__'__t you dare say anything. Sir. _

Data looked…odd. His habitual, fluid ease of movement was gone, and in its place a shuddery sort of awkwardness that Riker didn't like at all, and he had a hunch that Geordi liked it even less.

_Power not circulating properly_, Geordi had said, and there it was in a nutshell: an android running on fumes. Data tilted his head, the familiar birdlike mannerism flooding Riker with hope, and said:

"Accessing."

And then was silent, head cocked, with the bright sickbay lights catching on his damaged face. Riker turned an interrogative look on Geordi, who said:

"I hope I was the only one who heard that…" and one of the techs was shaking his head.

"The distortion on his voice synth? No. It was there."

"Data," Riker said, sharply, staring into the blank expression. "Data. Are you all right?"

Data blinked, and looked directly at the first officer, focussing. "Sir." It was there again, an electrical slurring on the "r", like static interference. Even Riker caught it that time. "Are you all right?" he repeated, gentler.

There was a short metallic clunk as the length of metal pipe hit the floor, released from Data's implacable grip. Behind Riker, unnoticed, Beverley Crusher picked it up. There were the imprints of Data's fingers in its surface.

"…all right," agreed Data eventually, nodding, just once. His voice was flat, as if he was concentrating on something else - which he would be, several million diagnostic subroutines in all likelihood. Then, in a more normal tone, he added: "Positronic engrams are functioning within acceptable parameters. Central power core is functioning at less than forty percent capacity. Emergency power core is -"

Riker interrupted. "How's your memory functioning?"

Another blink. "Fully, sir." Geordi winced at the electric quaver on the words, but Riker took the plunge.

"Tell me what happened on Hitchcock, Data."

There was an overly lengthy pause while Data interrogated his memory. Data's recall was normally practically instant. Then he glanced down at his now empty left hand, looked up at Riker with the closest thing the first officer had ever seen to alarm on that smooth, pale face, and asked:

"Did I kill the captain, sir?"

* * *

**THREE HOURS EARLIER**

"You're answering a question with a question, Number One," said Picard, with his usual dignity, but with a hint of bait-the-first-officer that Riker normally found amusing. At present, he found it frustrating. "That's never a sign that a cogent argument is about to come forth."

Because of course there was no reason why the captain shouldn't accompany the Away team if he wanted to - especially to a colony planet whose only problem was a broken long-range comms system and a few smashed hydroponics domes. Riker and Worf had been over the colony thoroughly, for several hours. They had met Mrs Hedren, a farmer specialising in poultry. They had spoken to Jeffries and Thorwald, who were documenting the colony's progress and history in minute detail. They had even been down into the tunnels below Anchorage and been introduced to the intricacies of the waste disposal system by a waste disposal specialist named Perkins.

It was all very normal and all very (Riker mentally apologised to his Academy Colony Theory lecturers) boring indeed, and Worf had been visibly disappointed at the lack of jeopardy and the abundance of goodwill.

So really, no reason at all, except that Riker had a job to do, and a big part of that job was going down to planets and doing some legwork. So the captain didn't have to do it.

No-one had ever mentioned what you should do if the captain _wanted_ to do the legwork himself.

Nothing in Starfleet command training had ever quite covered Jean-Luc Picard.

"To salve your conscience, Will," said the man in question, "I shall call it shore leave. We're not expected at Ceri Magna V for forty-eight hours, plenty of time for a day trip. I shall take Mr Data with me - "

The android swivelled in his chair to face the command circle, with a tiny quirk of expression in his eyes and mouth indicating he was, to some level at least, pleased with the notion.

" - we shall be perfectly safe," Picard concluded. "I have a mind to walk on ground again, tread the skin of a world beneath my feet and feel some natural gravity pulling me down. I'm sure Counsellor Troi will agree that this sort of thing is good for the soul."

Deanna Troi nodded and smiled dutifully, but there was still tension around her eyes.

"Assign a team of technicians and specialists to accompany us," Picard ordered, standing up and tugging down his uniform top. "We'll leave in two hours."

* * *

**PRESENT**

"Did you -" For a moment Riker partly wanted to shake Data for acting so out of character and not answering the question he'd been asked. The other, stronger part of him was getting the creeping horrors about that bloodstained metal pipe and Picard's injuries.

_Could Data really have…_

"No!" he said, aloud, "no, no-one killed the captain. He's right over there, under sedation but alive, Data, alive."

Had Data been human, he would have sighed, sagged with relief. He merely nodded, very slowly, accepting this fact, and not even looking to check that Riker's assertion was correct. Geordi, muttering under his breath, was back at work on Data's face, scanning the contours of the missing skin and feeding the resulting parameters into the replicator.

"Tell me who attacked the Away Team on Hitchcock," Riker ordered, and Data blinked, twice, before beginning to speak, his malfunctioning voice burring and cracking slightly.

"No-one, sir," he said, and that was when Riker's sinking feeling hit new depths.

Data was lying to him.

_Down the rabbit hole indeed. Captain, it's true Data cannot be fooled, but is he fooling us? And why?_

As if hearing Riker's unspoken thought, on his couch next to Data's, Picard shifted uneasily in his drugged sleep, revisiting Hitchcock in his mind.

* * *

**ONE HOUR EARLIER**

"Energise," said Picard: and they beamed down into hell.

It was red, and hot and barren, and had an atmosphere like gritty industrial smog. An unhealthy haze covered the landscape, stirring in a hot, seething wind. Half-hidden forms that could have been mountains hung, barely seen, behind the clouds. The air rattled and howled like a broken window in a hailstorm.

Data's pale skin and gold blaze of uniform stood out briefly, flickered in the haze. Behind the android might have been the blurs of blue science uniforms, another flicker of gold, but everything was vague, smoky, indistinct.

"Mr Data!" Picard shouted, and almost immediately choked on his mouthful of foul air. He thought Data turned to his hail, but couldn't be sure: so he reached up to his own chest, slapped his combadge. "Picard to _Enterprise_."

No reply. "_Enterprise_, come in!" Picard shouted. Had that been a whisper of response? It was so hard to hear. "_Enterprise_, if you can hear me, there's something….the weather down here, it's changed. Some sort of dust storm. It is imperative that we reach the colony before - "

A flicker of gold in the corner of his eye, and the fog cleared like a curtain being raised. Data stood sharply visible in the sudden window of clarity. He was stood perfectly balanced on the uneven red ground, right arm held aloft: in his grip was Lieutenant M'Reva, the Caitian, and she was quite clearly being strangled.


	5. Chapter 5

_You never want Data mad at you__…_

Will Riker remembered the words of Geordi La Forge, spoken on perhaps more than one occasion, and remembered also that he had readily joined in the general susurrus of agreement upon the fact that it was a good thing Data was so _nice_.

Because he was just so _strong _into the bargain. His build and manner were extremely unassuming, and it was too easy to forget the fact that he was capable of throwing duranium about like tissue paper. Indeed, they'd met his less-than-affable brother Lore, and Worf had been on the receiving end of a Soong-type android's strength directed in malice. Androids like Data could be dangerous, _were_ dangerous, were -

- were not killers, Riker was sure of it. He could see, in his peripheral vision, Beverley Crusher hovering with a padd in hand. The doctor had that intent, piercing look about her that made Riker add a new level of anxiety to his current state of mind. She evidently had new information, and Riker had a suspicion that it wasn't going to relieve the situation at all. He had to push things forward again.

"Data," he said, sternly, "the comm channel was open the whole time. We heard the Away Team being attacked. Now tell me who attacked you."

"It was no-one, sir," repeated Data, in a tone so solemn and quiet that Riker eased up a little. He had, he realised, been mentally prepared for stubbornness, insubordination, but from the android, of course, he received only conviction. And Data was damaged, who knew quite how badly. _I__'__m not interrogating a suspect, not yet, not yet, I__'__m interviewing a wounded officer under my command. Get it together, Will. _

He made a conscious effort to adjust his body language to something less aggressive. Possibly Data noticed this, or possibly his training overcame the vocal and power problems and got out the words: "Sorry, sir. Perhaps I have been insufficiently clear. It was not an individual or group of individuals who attacked us. It was Hitchcock itself."

"Pardon me, Commander Riker," cut in Beverley Crusher at this point, "but if that's the case, I'm going to have to ask Mr Data how he came to be holding a metal rod covered in the captain's blood?"

**

* * *

**

**ONE HOUR EARLIER**

Picard's voice rang out around the bridge. "It is imperative that we reach the colony before -"

The howling and the crackling almost overtook the transmission at this point, and Riker, alarmed and leaning forward in the command chair on the bridge, gave Worf a sharp look over his shoulder. Worf could do nothing: Picard had simply stopped speaking. Data's voice took over, calm and measured but raised, as the android tried to be heard against the maelstrom evidently raging around them.

"_Enterprise_. I have lost contact with the rest of the Away Team. The atmosphere is heavily clogged, obstructing vision and -"

Another howl of interference and Data's voice cut out.

"Mister Data, respond. Captain Picard, respond." Will said, deliberately, for the fifth time. Since the captain's initial activation of his communicator, and Data's own subsequent call, he had tried and failed five times to be heard by the team on the surface. He was becoming extremely worried. This was the command officer's moment, the delicate balance between careful enough and over-careful. Where was the tipping point? _When do I make the call to bring them home? _

"My god," the captain's voice cut in, after a nerve-wracking moment. "Data! Data!"

A period of confused noise, now: cries, muffled by hissing static and distance. Picard breathing hard as if running, and a further shout of "Mister Data - stand down -"

"Stand down?" Will wondered aloud, and heard Worf utter a low growl behind him.

Deanna Troi leant forward, her fingers gripping at the arm of her chair.

Data, this time, speaking over his own open comm channel, and a hint of confusion in the android's voice: "Captain? Where are you? Captain?"

An unidentifiable sound cutting in, very loud, like a half ton of wet sand falling onto a sheet of bubble wrap, and Picard shouting: "No!" Data's combadge spat out a mad gobble of interference and then registered a hard impact before cutting off abruptly and entirely. Riker realised he had stood up, unconsciously pacing toward the screen where Hitchcock roiled redly beneath them.

There was a Caitian screech from Picard's comm channel, a choking feline yowl of distress and fright, and Troi, who had been tense and pale, clutching at the bridge rail, uttered a soft sound of horror.

"Will, she's dying. She's dying and she's terrified."

The precious seconds he wasted at this point would haunt Riker later as he stood over the bodies on the transporter pad. Whether he could have saved more lives by acting quicker, he would never know. But the comms channel was suddenly alive with voices, the Caitian screaming, Picard shouting Data's name furiously and then yelling in obvious pain, Hutchens shouting something about grabbing a hand and other less coherent noises of panic and human agony. It was mesmerising and dreadful, and the bridge crew were caught in its spell until Riker's command training gave him a smart kick.

"Transporter room one. Get them up here. Chief! Get them back now!" he shouted, and ran for the lift, gathering Worf with a nod.

* * *

**PRESENT**

"It's a valid question, Mr Data," said Riker, helplessly, and the android turned his head slowly to regard the doctor out of his good eye. "Suppose we start with that and come back via the death of Hutchens -"

"I did not see Hutchens die, sir," said Data, immediately.

_And that's the first fact I actually feel comfortable with. I can believe that. _

"Out with it, then," Riker said, quietly. "The captain. Did you -"

Data gazed at him solemnly.

"Did I hit him with the pipe, sir? Yes, sir."

Geordi La Forge turned an expression of such disbelief on his friend that it was almost palpable. Riker knew he himself looked sick.

"For God's sake, Data, why?" Beverly Crusher asked, softly. The android, with what remained of his brow furrowed, held her gaze and said with perfect sincerity:

"To save his life, Doctor."

It had (said Data, his tones still slurring and buzzing over certain syllables) been a disorientating experience even for an android, beaming down onto the surface of Hitchcock. The instant dust storm had invaded his eyes and his sensors had worked into overdrive trying to keep up with the constant bombardment from every direction. Not needing to breathe, Data had also closed his eyes for the first few moments, allowing his sensors to regain their equilibrium.

When he opened then again, narrowed against the storm, there was no sign of the rest of the Away Team at all. Vanished in the cloying air. Shouting would do no good. Even to android ears any words would be whipped away and distorted within seconds of being spoken. He tapped his combadge immediately, working the tricorder automatically with his other hand to check for sensor readings more wide-reaching than his own internal sensors.

"_Enterprise_. I have lost contact with the rest of the Away Team. The atmosphere is heavily clogged, obstructing vision and sound. Any contact with the colony is impossible. Recommend immediate beam-up as the environmental conditions are hazardous to organic life."

He had paused, then, as there had been no acknowledgement from the ship. Speculation: the dust storm was inhibiting long-range communications. "Data to _Enterprise_."

He waited patiently, while the air screamed around him, hot sand scraping across his face. Nothing. Regulations should guarantee that after the proscribed time period had elapsed without communicator contact, the Away Team should be beamed up by order. So there was nothing for Data to do but wait and try to locate his fellow officers.

He turned his back to the worst of the howling gale, which still exposed him to scorching crosswinds, and started to methodically quarter the beam-down area. His eyes filled with sand: he scraped them clear. Then he heard the faintest of familiar voices, his captain, calling his name. The sound seemed to be coming from all around him. Speculation: the acoustic effects of a suspension of large sand grains in a heavy atmosphere contribute to reflection and rebounding of sound waves -

("Get on with it, Data," said Riker)

"Captain?" he shouted. "Where are you? Captain?"

And then Picard was charging at him out of the whirling maelstrom, his eyes blazing with fear and fury, and his mouth choking on the screamed word "No!"

Even Data had difficulty at this point raising a speculation as to the cause.


	6. Chapter 6

"You were killing her…"

Picard's voice, this time, and everyone jumped, except Data, who merely tilted his head to see better around Riker's shoulder. The captain lay on his couch with his eyes still closed, lips slightly parted and a gathering frown pulling at his brow. For a moment Riker thought he'd imagined the words, because Picard showed no further sign of consciousness or movement, but the doctor hurried to her patient's side and examined the readouts.

"Looks like I didn't give you nearly enough," she said, almost scolding, and Picard's almost inaudible response:

"Never enough, Doctor…"

His hand waved her away, moving slow with sleep.

"Will…"

Riker, summoned by that whispered word, was at the couch side in two short strides. Picard regarded him through slitted eyes. "What I saw," he said hoarsely, "was monstrous. Data was strangling Lieutenant M'Reva. She was dead in seconds."

"I did not kill the lieutenant, sir," said Data, quietly, from his own couch where Geordi had resumed repairs on his battered face. His expression was as usual, serene: but Riker fancied he caught a hint of mournfulness in the yellow eye. _Funny how he does that. For someone without emotions, he sure is expressive. _

But Picard was waving his hand again, dismissive. "I know that, Mister Data, I know that. Because when you stood in front of me and knocked me down, you were also behind me…"

And really (said Picard, his voice almost as querulous as Data's over some syllables and with Beverly Crusher trying to ply him with medication as he spoke) if the cold-blooded murder of the Caitian had been unbelievable, that was as

nothing to the assertion that Data could be in two places at once.

"Mister Data, stand down!"

For a moment (a horrible moment, to be sure, and a convincing one) Picard jumped to the obvious conclusion. Lore was back, somehow, and here on Hitchcock. Data's entirely psychotic brother was responsible for this, up to and including the sudden shift in weather and disappearance of a whole colony. Except -

- except that it just _wasn't_ Lore. Didn't move like him, didn't stand like him. Picard had twice been exposed to the Soong brothers in the same room together and he had been struck by how poorly, in the end, Lore impersonated his brother. The resemblance was purely physical: the two androids were too different in bearing and personality. In the same way as you know a close family member if you only saw the back of their head in a crowd, Picard knew Data when he saw him. And the two androids he'd seen, one holding aloft a dying woman and the other standing half-swathed in sand - they were both Data, he was quite sure of it. He stopped, turned to stare more intently at the one he'd half-glimpsed in the overheated fog during his aborted run toward the scene of murder before him.

The second Data stood there in the gale, his lips parted in that delicate expression of surprise that in a human would have been a yell of shock. Then he spoke, mouth forming the word _captain _and something more. The sound was whipped away by the much louder wind and another noise Picard couldn't recognise, like half a ton of wet cement being ripped up from the ground and hurled at a wall.

Abruptly, that second Data dropped from view, buried under what looked like half of Hitchcock's weight in earth and rock that descended from apparently nowhere. Picard fruitlessly shouted "No! Data!" once again, and spat out a mouthful of grit before turning back to check the other.

The Data with M'Reva in his grip was still there, but now he was casting the body of the Caitian aside and reaching for someone else, hidden by the whirling sand. Blood added to the red atmosphere, a fine spray making gory pebbledash across the captain's face.

"_Data!"_

Picard strained to see, but before he could clearly make anything out, something misshapen and bleeding skidded out of the maelstrom as if aimed by a catapult.

"Ensign Aliforth," said Picard slowly, and aimed a weary glower at Dr Crusher as she pressed a further cocktail of drugs to his upper arm. "Doctor, you will please desist!"

"I certainly will not," said Beverly, utterly without ire. The captain focussed beyond her, beyond Riker, and said:

"Mister Data…"

"Sir?"

The lines of Picard's face relaxed slightly, expression softening. "Are you all right?" he asked, and Riker almost smiled in pure appreciation of the man. _That's what makes a good captain._

"He's gonna be, Captain," said Geordi, giving Data's head a short push to the right so he could better apply the fresh layer of synthetic skin. Data gave Picard a brief nod (Geordi tutted) and affirmed:

"I am - gonna be."

"Good. Now. The timeframe I have just described for Commander Riker. Repeat it from your memory records, please."

The sudden surge of earth and rock had blindsided even the android in the clogging sandstorm, knocked him off his feet and swept him under like a particularly vicious undertow. The force had been considerable, far more than would be expected from a simple earth slide. The sensation was similar to the pull of gravity. Data was effectively deaf, blind and immobilised within microseconds. His internal alarms screamed at him, letting him know that the skin and primary layer of sensors on one side of his face had been flayed off during the incident. He was still not certain as to the cause -

("Speculate," ordered Picard)

Speculation: as there had been no discernable raised ground nearby to produce such a slippage through natural gravity or tectonic motion, and the storm, while fierce, had not been of sufficient strength to lift chunks of rock, then there must have been an autonomous action to cause the movement of the surface of the planet.

("Muhammed didn't need to go to the mountain?" offered Riker, and Data, after a moment's accessing, brightened and nodded.)

The mountain had undoubtedly come to Muhammed, or at least to Data, who was comprehensively buried in it. The weight was immense. Encased in earth, Data flexed his fingers with some effort, finding other items buried with him. His mind catalogued them at speed as he used them to rapidly haul himself out of his predicament. Rocks. A broken bowl. A bone, unidentifiable by touch. A metal pipe, approximately twenty inches -

("Approximately? Data, you must be ill.")

He came out of the morass still clutching the pipe, and immediately saw Picard almost on top of him, the body of Ailforth sprawled to one side, and Picard was…

"I did the only thing I could think to do," Picard interrupted, and Geordi, grateful for the opportunity, forced Data to hold his head still and his mouth shut as he worked. "I attacked the thing."

Riker was still somewhat lost in contemplation of the fact that a few minutes on Hitchcock seemed like hours of explanation. He leant into Picard, almost accusatory in his concern. "You attacked Data?"

Picard was already holding up a finger, forestalling.

"I attacked the thing I _thought _was Data, Number One."


	7. Chapter 7

"_Grab my h-h-hannnnd….!"_

The man's voice tailed off in an ululating wail. And Picard, caught in that horrible moment of decision, knew he could not have done anything else.

While intellectually knowing it was possibly the most hopeless, crazy and guaranteed-to-end-badly choice he could make, Picard heard Hutchens crying out in agony and could not stand idly by.

He rushed the Data in the sandstorm, aiming to shove the android off balance, distract him, anything. Even Worf would have had no illusions about his ability to tackle Data should the unthinkable happen. But the sound of Hutchens' voice twisted things deep in his animal hindbrain, drove him forward. He could not bear it. _That man is my responsibility and I will not leave him__…_

His rush took him into the blinding smog, and his first swing connected with something solid.

"It didn't feel like hitting a body."

Riker was dividing his attention between the history his captain was relating, the increasingly annoyed glances of the doctor attending her patient, and the fascinating if unnerving spectacle of Data having his face put back together. He fidgeted his shoulders, bringing his attention back to the narrative.

"It was not a body," said Data, with his usual combination of bland fact and utter certainty, causing Geordi to growl and try and hold his friend's head still. Half of Data's cheekbone was now covered in clean, new skin.

"And what was it, Mister Data?" murmured Picard.

"It was the same thing that struck me, sir - "

Data came out of the morass still clutching the pipe, and immediately saw Picard almost on top of him, the body of Ailforth sprawled to one side, and Picard was attacking something that looked like a mobile wall of earth and rock which appeared to have reared up from the surrounding landscape itself. He was about to be killed, that Data was certain of. A human being of the captain's stature, weight and determination would be overcome in 0.245 -

All this went through Data's mind in less than a micro-second.

He lunged forward.

The amorphous column of towering soil instantly expanded, drawing the android in like an overprotective mother in a crushing embrace. He brought his arms up, trying to make it as difficult as possible for him to be immobilised, and realised very rapidly that the more he fought against it, the harder its resistance became.

_Similar to quicksand. Intriguing._

He went limp, dropping his arms. The pressure on his body accordingly began to drop away, and he glimpsed in a split-second Picard's jaw and nose tilting back, choking, as he fought for air in the vice. He would still die, feeding the thing's strength by fighting. Something had to be done, and quickly. Data did it.

_Distance to the captain's head: 38 inches_

_Length of arm available: 28 inches - insufficient_

_Ability to move - currently less than 20.67%_

_Length of pipe: 20 inches (approx) - sufficient…_

_

* * *

_

"The window for action and calculation was extremely small, sir, as was the area available for aim. I am sorry."

"I didn't feel it," Picard said, reaching up now with his hand to touch the side of his jaw up to the temple. There was no mark now, no blood, and the pain was faded, buried under drugs and the cellular regeneration. Data's aim and gauge of the strength of the blow required had been mercifully accurate. "I remember nothing else until I woke up here."

"We beamed you up as quickly as we could," Riker said, and he consciously tried to keep the edge of guilt he was feeling out of his voice. "There was interference, slowed down the chief getting a lock. Three of your combadges were also non-functional, made it harder to get a fix."

"I believe some of the interference was due to the partial burial of Away Team members -" Data's voice burred over the "r" again, and Picard looked at him sharply with new concern - "under the skin of the planet."

"That's an interesting choice of words, Mister Data." Picard turned to Riker. "Hitchcock has a skin. It has movement, and life, and seemingly an intention to harm us. The question is, _why_?"

_First officer on parade…._Riker knew the question was mostly rhetorical but he also knew that Picard expected a reply. He straightened automatically. Data was currently incapable of chipping in, owing to a critical point in facial reconstruction occurring, and the captain's intent gaze was fixing on the middle distance, waiting…

"If someone wants to harm you, it's often because you either have something they want or you've done something they don't like," he said, feeling like a psych major on his first day at the academy. Picard was nodding.

"And they've gone to a lot of effort. The illusion of a thriving colony, the fabrications and communications…this isn't something put together quickly. This…this is something designed." He sat up further on the couch, putting a hand to a crick in his back and warning Beverly Crusher back with a glance. "Number One, I want you and Counsellor Troi -"

He was interrupted by a chirp from Riker's communicator.

"Riker here."

"Sorry, Commander," came the voice of the duty officer on the bridge, "but there's a call coming in from Hitchcock."

Sickbay went quiet, as all present drew breath and gave due consideration to the ramifications of this.

"Patch it through," said Riker, his eyes narrowed. On the couch beyond Picard, Ensign Redford was just coming out of unconsciousness, her face still slightly swollen. The voice seemed to swim out of the air, a known phantom:

"_This is Anchorage Colony calling any starship within range. If you can hear us, please respond. We require assistance. We have sustained damage due to the recent explosion of our nearest moon. Our long-range sensors are down. It's a miracle our long-range comms are still functioning. Please, respond. This is Anchorage Colony calling -"_

Riker met Picard's eyes.

"That was Mayor Stewart's voice."

"That it was," Picard agreed, and his expression was not forgiving, or amazed, but rather a mix of anger and interest. "And it seems his long-range communications system has miraculously repaired itself."

"But that's impossible. You were just down there and there was nothing. The colony was gone, if it ever existed in the first place."

"_Response, sir?" _came Worf's grim tones over the commlink. The Klingon sounded markedly less impressed with the miracle than the captain.

Picard paused before replying.

_He never hesitates, _Riker thought. _He pauses. He is measured. But it's never hesitation. How does he do that?_

"Acknowledge them, Mr Worf," said the captain, calmly. "Tell them…tell them the trading ship _Alfred_ is currently in orbit. Tell them we will be beaming down a support team shortly."

The vaguest suggestion of a breath of surprise from the security station. _"Aye sir," _said Worf, and cut the connection. Picard fixed Riker with a wry look.

"Well, Number One, I have the feeling we are about to try and spring a honey trap without getting mired in it…"


	8. Chapter 8

"It's difficult," said Deanna Troi, her expression indicating that she was aware this wasn't what Picard wanted to hear. They were sat in the observation lounge together, the counsellor, the captain, the first officer and the chief of security while Hitchcock's sickly red glow bathed the view ports. "What I can feel isn't clear. Not emotion, as such. More….more the echoes of emotion." She leant forward, clasping her knee with linked hands. "It's hard to put something like that into words. It's like the difference between sensing the emotions of a man undergoing torture compared to sensing the emotions of a man watching a play about a man undergoing torture, if that makes any sense."

"And can you tell me anything else about this hypothetical man watching the play?" asked Picard.

"Is it even a man?" Worf rumbled. Even a murmur from the Klingon sounded like the prelude to an interrogation. "From what Commander Data describes -"

"Exactly." Picard made a move as if he was planning to get up and pace, but didn't follow through with it. Riker, who was watching his commanding officer carefully for any signs he should be back in sickbay, wondered if anyone else had noticed, then inwardly shook his head at himself. He was sat at the table with an empath and a member of a race which habitually replaced commanding officers through the medium of physical combat. Of course they'd noticed. Picard was steepling his fingers as if the idea of getting up had barely flitted through his mind and fixing Riker with a steely look.

"I want you to take another Away Team down there."

An image of the pile of bloodied bodies on the transporter pad overwhelmed Riker's mind, briefly.

"Forgive me, sir, but I don't think that's wise. We lost three officers last time."

"But importantly, the first time we lost no-one at all," said Picard, calmly, and spoke to thin air imperiously. "Picard to La Forge."

"_La Forge here, sir."_

"How's Data?"

"_Doing well. There's a continuing issue with his central power feed we haven't managed to crack yet, but he's pretty chipper, considering."_

Riker could just imagine the look on Data's face as he looked up the term "chipper" in his memory.

"Glad to hear it. If he's available, I'd like him on the bridge at the science station. Some scan information's come in I'd like him to analyze before the Away Team leaves."

"_Data here. On my way, sir."_

"Thankyou, Mr Data."

Picard met the worried looks of his three officers with equanimity. "If I'm right," he said, softly, "the next visitors that Mayor Stewart welcomes to his colony will be in no danger whatsoever…"

* * *

"The scans are inconclusive, sir," said Data, his pale hands playing the science station like a musical instrument. Information flashed past at a speed Riker found slightly dizzying.

_Obviously his brain is running on more than fumes…_

Geordi was hovering in the periphery, tricorder in hand, taking continuous scans of his friend's condition. His forehead above the VISOR was lined with concentration and concern.

"Elaborate," said Picard, who was sat in the chair at the neighbouring station. Riker suspected it had taken more than a few words to keep Beverly Crusher from doing to the captain what Geordi was doing to Data now. The doctor was likely prowling her sickbay, waiting to use the phrase "I told you so," in anger if Picard was brought back in.

"There are certainly life signs registering," the android continued, "and there is evidence of human genetic material. However, I cannot confirm the presence of human life signs. The readings are unfamiliar."

"Data, when you were caught in the earth, you mentioned you found a bone."

"Yes, sir. A bone fragment, to be precise, broken, the unbroken end a ball-and-socket joint -"

"Could it have been human?" Picard persisted, low-toned. Data barely hesitated this time.

"Yes, sir."

The captain looked eminently satisfied with this, and abruptly changed tack, which frustrated Riker somewhat.

_The captain and the second officer…when they get going like this, it's like having two Sherlocks in the room, and I'm the worst bumbling kind of Watson…_

"The scans taken when we first reached orbit, of the moon fragments - "

"Ah," said Data, and negotiated fluidly with the console again to pull up a new set of readouts. "Indeed. Most intriguing. The recorded mass of the moon does not tally with the composite mass of the fragments scanned as we entered orbit."

"Are you saying we've lost some pieces of moon?" said Riker, incredulous.

Data gave him a blank look that still somehow managed to suggest he thought that was a rather inaccurate way of putting it, and nodded. "I believe so."

"Lost, and found," Picard murmured, and stood up, pulling down his tunic with more care than usual. "Thankyou, Mr Data. Will, I stand by my previous decision - prepare your Away Team. And my own convictions aside, I will take no chances. We will prepare subcutaneous transponders to be injected into each Away Team member that should allow for greater accuracy of the transporters, should any emergency occur."

Riker's doubts must have shown in his face, despite his best intentions, because Picard's gaze held him.

"And I have a script prepared for you all," he said, a humourless smile tugging up the corner of his mouth as his eyes flicked to Deanna Troi. "If this is a play about torture, I think it's high time we rewrote some of the lines."


	9. Chapter 9

"You've no idea how relieved I am that you're here, Mr Riker."

_And you have no idea how surprised _**I** _am that _**you're** _here_, thought Riker, pasting a helpful smile across his face and inwardly wanting to wring the man's neck._ If he's even a man…_

Behind them, taking scans of the surrounding area were Lieutenant Commander Data and Lieutenant (j.g.) Sutak. The sun was shining brightly in the hazy pink sky, and even Sutak shielded his eyes as he strolled across the strip of grass outside the habitat area. In accordance with Picard's suggestion, all three were wearing civilian clothes, as would befit a trading ship's crew.

"But surely," Riker had argued, as they stood in Sickbay prior to beaming down, having the transponders injected, "if I'm going down there, they'll remember my face from my first trip. What's the point in disguising ourselves?"

Picard had given him an enigmatic look: Data, pale fingers engaged in fastening a brown jacket around himself, had caught that look and seemed to absorb its meaning. Riker rubbed his beard uncomfortably as the hypo hissed against his arm.

"Sophistication, Number One," Picard had said. "The test of a sophisticated man is how he picks up on the nuances."

_All of which is about as useful as a Pakled at a grammar festival, _thought Riker, trying to maintain sociable eye contact with Mayor Stewart while keeping tabs on Data, who was pacing just at the edge of his peripheral vision.

Geordi hadn't been entirely happy about Data's assignment to the party. It had taken a combination of the android's own assurances that he was quite recovered enough to go and indeed wanted to, and the captain's almost supernaturally calm conviction that there would be no danger to mollify him.

_And there's absolutely no evidence that this man recognises me at all. Evidently we have a lack of nuances._

He shook off the attack of déjà vu. "Well, we'll do our best to get your equipment fixed up, Mr Mayor," he said, jovially, and recalling Picard's "script", added: "But I guess we'll need to beam down a few more of our crew to get the work done effectively."

"Ah, yes. Of course. And how many are your crew?"

_Am I imagining it? _Riker thought. _Or is he looking a little more interested than before? _

He hesitated a beat, watching the man's eyes. Were they showing anything other than honest human interest? "There's about eighty of us," he said. "Most of us are pretty clued up on basic colony equipment. We're from a colony ourselves."

"How wonderful," said Stewart, and Riker felt that as quickly as his interest had piqued, it was gone again. He took a moment to glance at Data, who had come to an abrupt halt a few feet from one of the habitat units and was apparently staring fixedly at a group of colonists stirring a communal stew pot. The android's shoulders were set in a way that somehow set alarm bells ringing in Riker's mind. He was utterly immobile in a way organic folk could never be, and Riker suddenly recalled the description Data had given of the attacking earth and rock. It was totally at odds with the sunny, peaceful clearing around them.

_What the hell is he seeing over there?_

"Are you all right, Mr Riker?"

Riker blinked. Suddenly everything seemed sinister, as if the bodies of the three dead officers were lying there on the cheerfully pink-lit grass, bleeding out over everything and tainting it.

"You seem upset."

Mayor Stewart radiated polite concern. Riker treated him to a reprise of his good ol' boy grin.

"Just thinking about my cargo," he said. "Some of it has a limited lifespan, shall we say. It'll be ruined if we don't fix you up and get underway soon."

The mayor chuckled. "Your friends don't seem to share your concerns." He indicated Sutak with a wave. The lieutenant had his back to them, his sleek black head bowed over his tricorder. Data remained still as a statue, half-turned toward the habitat. It hit Riker then: he had chosen as an Away Team who were as close to emotionless as was possible - an android and a Vulcan.

_Did I do that subconsciously? Choose a team who could not share my own trepidation?_

The mayor had clasped his hands before him and was regarding Data jovially.

"Especially that man," he said. "He seems quite relaxed."

"Well, speaking strictly between us, Mr Mayor," Riker lied, the big sociable smile never leaving his face, "he's not too bright."

Data did not know his intellect was being impugned behind his back by his commanding officer: but even should he have done it would not have held his interest. What he was seeing certainly differed a great deal both from the whirling sandstorm and the rural serenity of Anchorage colony. He held his tricorder out before him almost like a weapon, on constant scan.

The air around him was still choked with dust, but it was more of a fog than a maelstrom, and there were continual sluggish movements all around in the half-hidden landscape. If he adjusted the focus in his eyes, or consulted some of the more comprehensive readings from the handheld, he could tell there were large natural geological formations in the distance - mountains, valleys, perhaps even a still-flowing river. The scan results were oddly garbled, as if Hitchcock's gravity was fluctuating randomly, and the magnetic poles of the planet seemed to be skipping about like playful kittens.

Data, who was not in possession of the sort of mind that was given to kitten analogies, merely thought that it looked rather similar to the symptoms of a planet close to core collapse.

"Mr Sutak," he said. The Vulcan looked up, and covered the few yards between them with long strides of his rangy legs. "Please allow me to compare readings on the geological and magnetic spectra with you."

Sutak tabbed a control and transmitted his own readings to Data's tricorder. "I have noted nothing unusual, sir."

Data looked at him with a trace of a frown. Golden eyes met solemn brown ones: Sutak was his usual, imperturbable self, and met his superior's look without reaction.

"Nothing unusual at all?"

"No, sir. Nothing."

Had Data been human, he would at this point have probably succumbed to self-doubt. But the concrete evidence was there in front of him, and indeed all around him. Sutak's readings were just as garbled as his own, but the Vulcan simply could not see them.

Androids, like tricorders, are difficult to fool. Data nodded, dismissing Sutak along with any idea that the technology was misleading him, and noted that his own tricorder had just started telling him quite assertively that there was something directly behind him that he ought to be looking at.

He turned around, pacing a few steps forward.

And froze in place like a statue, unaware of Riker's eyes on him from that distance away.

"Please hurry back," the mayor was saying as Riker, suddenly consumed with a need to know what the hell was going on over there with the second officer, tried to extricate himself without causing suspicion. Data's suddenly intent appearance had unnerved him, and he just wanted to get the hell out of Dodge before anything else happened. _Whatever it is, I bet I can't see it. I could be surrounded by the things that murdered Ailforth and M'Reva and I'd never even know it. _

It was maddening - he was standing in the middle of a minefield covered in bright, blousy flowers that concealed the horror beneath their petals.

"Don't worry," he forced himself to say, "when we've gathered all the data we need, we'll be back with appropriate personnel."

"Thankyou. Thankyou so very much for your kindness." The mayor wrung Riker's hand once more, then headed off toward one of the ruined hydroponics domes.

Riker strolled over to Data's side with affected nonchalance, and murmured:

"Feeling all right, Mr Data?"

No small part of his concern had been that Data's misbehaving main power feed might have given up entirely and incapacitated the android. But Data turned his head to look at him, said thoughtfully:

"I believe I understand…"


	10. Chapter 10

**PRESENT**

"That kind of psychic control," said Beverly Crusher, "is unprecedented."

Data looked up from the science station in mild surprise.

"Yes, Doctor. I believe I said that."

Beverly tossed her head in exasperation. "What you just said, Data, was that the mental hold these creatures have over us is so tight it affects the way we perceive things even on board ship. Excuse me for needing to add my own layer of medical shock to that." The doctor paced back and forth behind Worf at the security station, with Picard watching her in faint amusement. "The recorders, the ship's logs, everything - nothing we saw and heard was real."

"Define real," murmured Picard, from behind her.

"Oh, don't be pedantic, Jean-Luc. You know perfectly well what I mean, and so does Data." The android sensibly remained as deadpan as ever, only a short blink and frown flitting across his face. "What we're talking about here is a mental force so powerful it outdoes anything we've encountered before, outside of the Q."

Riker gestured at the screen in front of them. "Show me again, Data. I want to try and see it…"

The console sprang to life, displayed the video log of their last visit to Hitchcock as taken by Data. The tricorder panned across the colony, showing grass, trees, buildings, colonists…

Riker shook his head. "I just don't -"

"None of us do." Picard eyed Data shrewdly. "But you saw it, didn't you?"

**ONE HOUR EARLIER**

"You understand what, Data?"

Sometimes, despite all his best intentions, Will still found Data frustrating. In the early days of their posting together he'd found it hard to understand his android colleague: Data was that little bit _too_ different, a psychological cross between an enthusiastic child and a stone-cold super-genius. Riker had little experience with kids and less with genii. But it was extremely difficult for him to actively dislike Data, who was by almost any standards mild-mannered and open in his dealings with people.

_But oh, he could be infuriating - _

He gestured to the colonists in front of them and hissed, "What's _wrong_, what do you see?"

Data, his yellow eyes fixed upon the creatures before him, obediently began to describe what he saw in his usual, dispassionate tones. Riker's feeling of being surrounded by unseen horror escalated, gripped at his gut.

"Before me at a distance of six feet is a group of four creatures, similar or identical to the section of Hitchcock which attacked the captain and myself. The tricorder identifies them as being silicate in structure. They are engaged in apparently consuming or otherwise disassembling sections of a human torso by a slow process of erosion of tissue fragments as a result of continual sweeping motions. The human torso is partially clothed in Starfleet issue -"

"Okay."

Riker's voice came out harsher than he'd intended. He felt sick. _Hutchens, that has to be Hutchens. Don__'__t think about his family. _"Okay, Data. Enough."

The four colonists he could see in front of him were slicing up a sort of vegetable that looked like potatoes and dropping them into a stew pot. One of them, a little girl, looked up at him and smiled. Riker bared his teeth in a rictus grin in return.

"Let's get the hell out of here," he said, through those teeth.

**PRESENT**

"Of course, Number One, it was your words that gave me the confirmation I was looking for."

Riker did a brief double-take.

"Me, sir?"

"You, sir!" Picard steepled his fingers before him. "You said to me that if someone wants to harm you, it's often because you either have something they want or you've done something they don't like. And you were of course quite correct, but you left out an important addendum to your first point. When animals kill for food, they _are _killing you because you have something they want, but it goes beyond that. Deeper. It is instinct, it is evolution. It is _nature_. Now, it is the same as the psychic influence. It is an evolved weapon, a predator's weapon."

"The explosion of the moon," said Data, responding to a go-ahead nod from his captain, "was not truly an explosion. It was more of - a diaspora. The creatures I have seen on Hitchcock's surface were originally resident on its moon and indeed made up part of its mass. They moved to Hitchcock following occupation by the colonists, and predated there. Their development seems to have been following classic predator-prey expansion lines into an untenable situation, where there are only predators remaining and no prey to feed upon. Such ecological dynamics are only seen in species of predator which do not or cannot co-exist with their prey in the same environment. They must either continually travel to hunt prey -"

" -or lure prey to come to them," Riker completed. He met Picard's approving expression and tried to lighten the sense of growing unease on the bridge by adding: "That's one sucker of a lure."

"It's remarkably sophisticated in some ways and quite primitive in others," offered Troi, leaning with one delicate hand on the bridge rail. Riker exchanged a glance with Worf. _The amount of blood we__'__ve seen in the transporter room recently, this__'__ll never be anything but primitive to me_. "The illusion is complete, but only effective against a single prey in a single ongoing instance. Presented with two instances against the same prey, they could only re-create their original subterfuge."

"He didn't recognise me at all," Riker said. "The creatures don't differentiate between prey animals, only that they _are_ prey animals."

"Correct, sir." Data tilted up to look at the first officer who was leaning on the back of his chair. "The delusion was designed to lure us down for an initial assessment, where we would be shown exactly what we expected to see and be 'lulled into a false sense of security'". He paused a beat, seemingly waiting to be corrected on his use of the idiom, then continued. "The second beam-down would, of course, be of a larger group, more suited to the creatures' needs for food. I would surmise that the original colonists were overwhelmed using similar tactics of confusion. From what I have observed, the creatures are slow-moving except in their strike. They rely upon their mental powers to confuse and disorient their prey, using images designed to frighten when attempting to split up a group or herd in a particular direction -"

Picard was forced through an uncomfortable moment of memory in which M'Reva, her hind paws kicking at the air, was hoisted aloft by Data's implacable arm. "Perhaps the colonists even turned against each other," he said softly. "Killed each other, believing their closest friends to be dangerous murderers."

"Indeed." Data played the console again, bringing up a new set of charts. "Additionally, there has been a significant effect upon Hitchcock's gravitational field and magnetic poles. The creatures appear to have created false magnetic fields around their most heavily colonised sites."

"That sure would explain why your gyros got all out of whack, Data." Geordi folded his arms. "But it shouldn't even be possible. Localised magnetic field generation in a living being?"

"Six impossible things before breakfast," said Riker, thoughtfully, and when Picard gave him a surprised look, added, "but what do we do about them?"


	11. Chapter 11

Passing the transporter room on the way to a briefing in the main biolab, Riker could have sworn he could still smell the metallic tang of blood.

_Ridiculous. _

The clean-up team would have been exemplary. They always were, especially with biohazard spills like that. And the air filters would have sucked out the scent within minutes, ditto the scent of the cleaning procedure, until within an hour nothing would have been left except -

He found himself entering the room without really meaning to. The ensign on duty gave him a curious look, as if wondering whether he should snap to attention or not in the presence of the first officer.

"Sir?"

The transporter pad was, of course, empty and as clean as any pad should be. Riker stood there dumbly for a moment - _I'm_** really **_going to have to book a session with Deanna about _this - and remembered the blood. _That's where it is. The smell's in my memory. And no amount of air filters can touch it. _

"Sir?"

The ensign had moved forward and was about a hair's breadth away from tapping his superior's arm. "Are you all right, sir?"

"As you were," said Riker, only a touch more harshly than he intended, and turned on his heel to exit the room.

* * *

"Dust, Commander," said Beverly Crusher, her eyes amused. At her shoulder, Data leant forward in order to examine her experiment more closely. "Or a combination of silicates. Loam, perhaps, even sand. But dust will pretty much cover it."

"Intriguing," said Data, at which point Riker, walking through the door, mustered a smile. Only Data could be genuinely intrigued by a handful of what looked for all the world like dried mud in one of the lab's vacuum-sealed containers.

"Where's the captain?" he asked.

"I sent him to bed," said the doctor, dryly. "He'll be joining us later. And Data, if I notice anything aberrant in your systems while I'm here, don't think I'm above ordering you to bed as well."

The android, to Riker's eyes at least, looked suitably warned. His yellow eyes flicked to the first officer as if for confirmation, and Will couldn't resist it.

"If it was doctor's orders, Data, I'd carry you there and tuck you in myself." He managed to forestall it, holding up a hand, but it was a close thing. "I know, I know. You don't sleep. But remember, it's the thought that counts."

He could almost see the thought processes darting across whatever passed for Data's subconscious. Quick, brilliant Data, who could compute at who knew how many thousand reps per second - hit him with a couple of aphorisms relating to human behaviour and you could practically sit back with popcorn to watch him work it out.

_And it's better for him to work it out, too - means he's learning for himself and not by rote._

"What do we have, Doctor?" he asked, eyeing the dust.

"The captain wanted a way to neutralise these things," Crusher said, "and I have to tell you, it's not great news. These creatures can travel through vacuum, withstand extremes of heat and cold, and have the tensile strength of a couple of dozen duranium cords."

"Is he thinking that we're going to have to fight these things?"

_For fight, read "destroy" - Worf would be proud of me, I'm finally thinking like a Klingon. But that's not what Starfleet teaches us. But I saw the blood - _

"I think he's thinking like a Starfleet captain," said Crusher, almost as if reading Riker's mind, "covering every possibility before making his decision."

"Starfleet has encountered a number of hostile races during routine investigations," said Data, "including the Ondras on Harkaway's World, the Gorn sub-species colony on Ypsilon X2, and...a number of others. The reactions of each ranking officer have been remarkably different, relating to the severity of the threat, the years of service of the ranking officer in question, the potential of the threat to spread -"

"Thanks, Data."

_A number of others? What, no exhaustive list? _

Riker traded a glance with Crusher, who nodded almost imperceptibly. The android was evidently still far from back to normal. _It's easy to tell with humans. They get a fever, they get hot. They get sick, they go pale and lose their appetite. I really doubt Data could get any paler, but..._

Data had caught the glance and the nod, and looked between them both for a moment to gather the implications, then: "Am I going to be 'ordered to bed', Doctor?"

"Not just yet," said Beverly, reassuringly. "Besides, I wouldn't want to have Will honour his promise to carry you. He'd strain his back."

Riker's eyebrows hiked. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. So what am I to take back about this - " his gesture took in the dust - "to the captain?"

"Tell him that if he wants a permanent solution to the Hitchcock problem," said Crusher, pressing her lips grimly, "we might just be able to oblige him."

"With dust?"

Riker, smiling, couldn't keep the amused incredulity out of his voice.

"Yes, Commander," said Data, and his rock-solid certainty would have been comforting to anyone. "With dust."

* * *

Far from being in bed, a fact that would have made Doctor Crusher snort with derision had she known, Picard was in his ready room. The shadow of the exotic lionfish flicked back and forth across his tank.

Waiting. He hated waiting. Waiting was something that admirals excelled at - it was all they had left, after all. Removed from their place among the stars, given a desk, and a handful of patience, and told to wait. To a Picard, it was anathema. He had his best people working to bring him a handful of solutions, and then, only then, could he give answers. It was maddening. _Give me action, give me liberty, but don't give me stagnation…_

_Maybe I should have been raising barns after all…_

"Bridge," he said, aloud, "any communiqués from Starfleet Command?"

A pause, a chirp.

"_Negative, sir."_

It was too early, and he knew that, but the waiting was starting to prey on him. And who was that at Ops, standing in for Data? Ensign…Chavez? The man was barely out of bridge rotation training. Someone was evidently getting sloppy with the duty rotas during the crisis. Well, he'd have to -

Forget that. Focus on the problem. And it was definitely a three-pipe problem, one any new captain would dread. He found his mind wandering inevitably to the old story of the lady and the tiger. Whichever door he opened had a price, had a consequence.

Because who can blame the tiger? A tiger is not evil. A tiger does not hate. A tiger does not manipulate, scheme or betray. It is a predator, and it kills to live, not in violation of any code of ethics. But through the ages humanity has assigned morals to any predator that crosses the line. Killing deer is one thing, the slaughter of sub-sentient by sub-sentient, but the slaughter of sentient by non-sentient…

"Murder," he said out loud, in the clean emptiness of his bright little room. The word didn't fit here. It had no place here amongst the lit panels and the pristine carpet. But perhaps Riker had seen it in its proper place, in that transporter room where blood had turned a civilised corner of the Federation into a little piece of the jungle, red in tooth and claw…

Picard watched the lionfish turn against the simulated reef with a swirl of delicate dappled fins. A lionfish was deadly, too, could poison and kill with those seemingly decorative spines. And he could no more tell the fish not to do so than he could order the creatures of Hitchcock to starve themselves to death.

One may not talk with tigers. One kills them, or one avoids them. And in the past, any man-eating tigers had inevitably been shot by the inhabitants of nearby villages.

The captain's hand flattened against the desk, and the skin around his eyes tautened as he frowned.

_And my finger on the trigger. Picard, the big-game hunter._


	12. Chapter 12

If Picard was feeling like an unwilling huntsman, Riker was feeling more like the tireless sherpa, carrying more than his fair share of the baggage and trying hard to beat a clear path forward. He visited Worf next, who informed him that yes, it would be relatively simple to eliminate most of the southern part of the colony continent from orbit. With a modified phaser beam of the kind used for deep mineral mining. No, the Enterprise wasn't currently equipped with such a beam, but he'd already looked up the specifications and was confident the engineering replicators could handle it. That, should the captain ask, added Worf, was not his preferred option, but the creatures seemed resistant to being engaged in honest face to face combat. They were evidently cowardly, sneaking animals, worth less than the dirt under the paws of a baby _targ_. Surely it was time to take vengeance for the deaths of the three who had been killed -

Riker managed to forestall a full denegration of the Hitchcock predators' honour by saying a quick thanks and goodbye. He then paid a visit to the chief engineer, who in his turn agreed that Worf's plan was sound in concept, and that the replication of the materials would indeed be simple, but that if they could do it in under six weeks, then he personally, Geordi La Forge, was the queen of Spain. He would in fact repeat this in the briefing room if asked. Several times, if necessary. His best suggestion was that if the captain chose this as a viable course of action, he would require an immediate secondment of staff from Technical Services B and C shift as a bare minimum just to get things started, not to mention a practically permanent reassignment of Data in order to get the isolinear routing set up quickly enough. Surely that wasn't what the captain would want, though? Surely -

Will, after staving off the inevitable mental image of Geordi in a traditional Spanish dress and tiara, admitted that he had suspected as much about staff resource and withdrew to the bridge to gather his own thoughts before reporting to Picard. _And what have I got? A whole bunch of "surely". But then, that__'__s my job. The first officer__'__s job is to collate, summarise, and advise. And to stick his neck in the noose first. Damnit, my neck should have been in that noose. _

"Is that what all this is about?"

Deanna Troi's voice sounded sympathetic. _But then doesn__'__t it always? _thought Riker, turning with a sideways smile to see Deanna just taking her seat in the chair to his left.

"All what, exactly?"

"All this." Troi jutted her jaw forward, miming a beard with a flicker of her hand, and rounding her shoulders in belligerent fashion. "You've been strutting about the ship like a peacock with a sore head."

"I think you're mixing your Terran metaphors. You'd confuse the hell out of Data and to be honest, me as well."

Deanna smiled. "It was deliberate, Will. What I'm sensing from you - it's a mixture of pride, anger and guilt." She leant closer. "You're angry with yourself because you couldn't stop the captain and the others getting hurt. It wasn't your fault."

"You know, if you're going to do this for me, you may have to set up a therapy camp for first officers and executive officers, because trust me, we _all_ feel like this." He smiled despite himself. "If you ever meet a first officer who isn't seething with pride, anger and guilt, then he's not doing it right."

Troi pursed her lips close in an amused line, then said:

"If cutting off your right hand would ensure the safety of everyone here on the bridge, would you do it?" At his startled glance, she added: "Not to save their lives in a moment of danger. Just to keep them safe as they go about their everyday duties. To keep them from tripping as they walk to Ten-Forward, or to stop them spraining an ankle at Parisee Squares."

Riker thought about this a moment.

"No. I guess I wouldn't."

"Of course you wouldn't. Living is danger. Working out here in space is risk. Every Starfleet officer knows that when they sign up, and they wouldn't be out here if a part of them didn't _want_ it. I noticed how you felt when we first arrived here, Will and I know how you've always felt about being on board a starship. You want the universe to dare you so that you can throw its dare back in its face." Her smile had faded, leaving a professional seriousness. "Don't forget that, because Hutchens, Ailforth and M'Reva certainly didn't."

Riker almost felt his head begin to shake, to deny that the officers who had lost their lives would have had any truck with such stalwart optimism, but he couldn't do it. _Because they would have done. Just stepping into the Academy is like standing in front of the cosmos and shouting __"__Come and have a go if you think you__'__re hard enough.__" Well, I'm game if you are, cosmos. _

He saw out of the corner of his eye Hitchcock spinning slowly in its ugly red corona, and as the door to Picard's ready room hissed open he felt the steel resolution settle into his chest.

_Come and have a go… _

"Captain? I have options for your consideration."

* * *

"Data? Hold up a sec. I'll walk with you."

The android half-turned, giving the approaching Geordi La Forge his profile and a mild, enquiring expression. The engineer looked distracted, if Data was any judge: and he should be by this time. He dedicated a large amount of his time to studying the ways in which his human colleagues expressed themselves. Geordi was moving more quickly than his average speed, averages taken over a year and a half of study, including threat-enhanced sprint, team-based sports, walking alone, walking with others -

Geordi was speaking to him earnestly; a question was being posed. The processor that had been attending to his friend's words shifted priority levels. This was a philosophical and ethical question. Those always required more thought and attention than statistical analysis.

"I do not believe that one may apply ethics to a species which does not display the necessary level of cognitive thought to understand concepts such as right and wrong," he answered, after a pause of almost two seconds to peruse the history of human philosophy and the landmark court cases of '77 and '03.

"I hear you, but we kill off viruses every day." They entered the turbo lift. "Deck Four." Unbeknownst to Geordi, he had taken the part of Commander Riker in an almost identical conversation that had taken place in the captain's ready room almost an hour earlier, with Data speaking the side of Captain Picard. "Three of our guys died, Data. When does it stop being nature and start being a problem we just have to solve?"

The doors hummed open. Geordi took a few steps forward and was aware of his companion's silence immediately. It generally took a direct request to make Data stop talking, and despite the complex ethical nature of Geordi's question there should have been something, some manner of response.

"Data?"

The android was knelt on the floor just outside the turbo lift doors, running his hands over the carpeting and bulkhead. He didn't look weak, or malfunctioning. Just bent down on one knee, examining -

- examining empty air, apparently. Geordi drew a breath slowly, trying to still his worry. This was sure as hell not usual. "Data," he said, again. "What're you doing?"

Data raised his head with a tiny frown gathering his brows and said: "I have been checking for a pulse. There is none." Glancing down again, he tapped his insignia and added: "Data to Sickbay. Emergency medical team to Level Four, Turbolift Three."

Geordi was crouched beside him at this stage. The colours, inputs and impulses from his mechanical VISOR flowed flawlessly into his brain, and his well-trained brain set to the complicated task of interpreting them, and yet still he saw nothing. "You're freaking me out here. What's going on?"

And Data, who was looking down at a half-flayed human corpse, didn't know what to say for almost 0.056 seconds.


	13. Chapter 13

It was perhaps the oddest medical examination Picard had ever seen.

The couch was empty: the medical readouts all remained resolutely at zero, blipping up occasionally as a stray skin cell or minute organism floated across the sensors. Three medical staff, amongst them Beverley Crusher, hovering around the empty bed with additional tricorder, drawing a blank. Crusher even placed her hands onto the couch, feeling across the surface with bare hands and evidently finding nothing.

And in the background, Lieutenant Commander Data, his golden eyes flicking between the empty bed and the stern face of his commanding officer. Geordi had just finished running another scan of his friend. "He seems fine, Captain. The issue with his power circulation is still there, but the self-correcting mechanisms are getting better at handling it. His positronic net checks out. I can't find anything wrong with him that would suggest he was seeing things."

Picard regarded Data seriously, then, with a sad quirk of his lips, he said: "I suppose it would be callous to say I almost wish there _was_ something amiss with your perceptions, Mr Data."

Data gave this a moment's thought, classified it as a rhetorical question, and did not answer. Picard continued. "Because the other alternative we are left with is scarcely appealing - that we've brought one of these creatures on board with us unawares and that it has been killing members of my crew."

"My hypothesis is that the creature was beamed up along with the first away team. At that point we were not aware of either their existence or the extent of their abilities. The creature would have escaped notice while I was unconscious and has remained undetectable since then." Data looked over once more at Dr Crusher. Her hands were red and the cuffs of her uniform tunic were dappled with blood. He raised his voice, very slightly. "Doctor. If I may suggest that you wash your hands before handling any sterile equipment?" Beverley gave him a startled look and headed straight for the sonic cleanser.

"Data, I want you to personally carry out a full scan of the ship. Every area, every sweep we can run, I want you to do it. And quickly." Picard found his eyes being drawn again to that empty couch. It was starting to make him feel very uneasy. "First of all we're looking for that creature, wherever it is. But secondly…"

He sensed rather than saw Dr Crusher scrubbing more briskly than was necessary at her apparently pristine hands. "Secondly," he said, quietly, "we're looking for more bodies."

* * *

"_General quarters. All off-duty personnel, general quarters. Red alert."_

The _Enterprise_ was going into shutdown. She was a large ship, and as Picard had often felt to his cost, she was full of civilians as well as crew. And what was worse, Picard thought as he headed back to the bridge with the automated beat to quarters ringing out all around him, was that he couldn't even be sure that sending people away to lock themselves in their rooms was the best thing to do.

_That creature could be anywhere. Invisible. Undetectable. The best chance we have is that Data can track it down before it kills anyone else. _

And just how many bodies were lying out in the corridors, or sprawled like broken dolls across the floors of turbo lifts? Was it possible that they wouldn't have noticed a few people out of hundreds going missing over the space of mere hours? Picard entered the lift and tried to dismiss the possibility that he was standing in a corpse all unawares. He wondered, briefly, if it was worth asking Data to check every crew member for bloodstains on their trouser cuffs or hands.

But that would perhaps waste time. Down in engineering, Data would be practically plugging himself into the ship's internal sensor system right now, using those machine perceptions that could not be fooled as easily as organic brains to see things that were really there.

_Six impossible things before breakfast…_

Will Riker's earlier words came back to him, and he smiled humourlessly. This situation was getting more and more like a grotesque fairy tale by the minute.

* * *

That same Will Riker was currently on the bridge, in the command chair. He had been there to hear Geordi's call in, at which point Picard had shot out of his chair like a cork from a bottle and fairly snapped at Riker to take over the bridge.

_Captain, you'd better get down here. I'm with Data. He says he's found a dead body._

Which opened up a whole can of worms, of course. I'm with Data, but only _he_ says he's found a dead body. Not, _we__'__ve_ found a dead body. No name. No details of how the death occurred.

Somehow, it was the lack of a name that bothered Riker most.

_Always the same, has been with humans for centuries. If you overhear that someone's died, you always have to know who it is, just in case they were a friend or worse, family. This is why obituary columns were always so popular. Morbid fascination. _

"We're a grim species, sometimes," he observed aloud, drawing a frown from Worf at the security station above the horseshoe rail. The turbo lift admitted a severe-looking Picard, and Riker responded instantly to the clipped "In my ready room," command that was swiftly issued.

"I did exactly the same thing," said Picard, collecting his tea from the replicator. Riker frowned, confused.

"Did what, sir?"

"As soon as it properly started to sink in what kind of situation we were in, I started imagining invisible corpses piled high around me." The captain regained his chair and cradled his tea with one hand. "It's instinctive, Will. You immediately looked around the room, checked the floor, even scuffed up the carpet. Just in case there was a body there, even though if there was neither of us would be able to see it."

Riker considered. He _had _done all of those things, if he thought about it. But Picard was right. It had been an instinctive reaction, not something deliberate. _Just as a predator instinctively kills. We can't control our instincts, and neither can they. Shut up, Will. Stick to the task at hand. _

"I suppose this changes those options we were talking about earlier more than a little," he said, leaning forward. "It's not an isolated planet we're talking about, it's more like an infection. Any visiting ship could take one of these things away with it and not know about it until everyone on board was dead."

Picard nodded. "Naturally I sent Starfleet Command full details of our situation and of your options immediately after you presented them to me." He stared into his cup as if seeking further clarification there. "However, I do feel that this new development may complicate the issue."

Riker ran a finger over the edge of Picard's desk. "Data think the sweep of the ship'll take him long?"

"Less than an hour. He's interfacing directly with the raw data, if you'll pardon the expression."


	14. Chapter 14

In the end, there were only four bodies, and Geordi found himself in a quandary about mentally using the word _only_. Four was too many; four was more than none, and that couldn't be anything other than bad. But four wasn't fourteen, forty, or four hundred either. That couldn't be anything other than good.

Data had run both scans simultaneously for greatest efficiency: utilising both the computer core and his own processors in tandem allowed him to customise the scans separately for both corpses and killer. Geordi hovered over him, anxious, although all the engineer had really had to do was attach the co-axial cable to the port inside Data's scalp access panel.

He hated doing that, if he was honest with himself. You didn't just carelessly plug your best friend into the mains by the head. It was weird. Especially that moment when (if you were watching carefully) you could see Data's personality taking a back seat and the powerful but impersonal computer functions taking over. His eyes went blank, his body lost its animation, and if you were Geordi, with Geordi's unique vision, you could see Data almost _disappear_ into the structure of the ship. His hardware systems would synchronise with the _Enterprise_, his core programmes would hook up and meld seamlessly into the ship's software. Like a chameleon on a log, Data would start to look less like a person and more like an oddly-shaped part of the console. And Geordi didn't like that. Data was definitely a person. Forgetting that could get you into some very dicey moral grey areas.

"Hey," he said, softly. "How's it going?"

There was a very brief pause. Deep inside the sensor system, it took Data a moment to re-integrate with his body.

"I believe I have located the predator."

"That's great. Where is it?"

A console to Geordi's left flicked to life and displayed a wire frame of the ship's structure, with a blinking red light buried deep in the aft section. The engineer breathed out in relief. Locating the problem was always half the battle in his business. "Thanks, Data. Come on out of there, now."

"Shutting down external -"

Data stopped speaking, his lips parted, his face empty. To Geordi's eyes he remained physically and mentally subsumed into the body of the ship.

"Data. What're you doing?"

"I was beginning to shut down the external scan. I have now reinstated."

"What? Why? You found the thing, didn't you?"

The wire frame on the screen to the left rotated again, and more red dots began to display across the external hull of the _Enterprise's _saucer section as she hung in space.

"Oh, _shit_."

* * *

The call had come in. Riker would have been just as tempted to use a particularly rude word, had Picard not been coldly controlled in front of him. You didn't swear in front of Picard. It was worse than the idea of swearing in front of your very traditional grandparents.

If the captain himself chose to get Gallic with his invective, that was different. That's when you knew things were very serious indeed.

"_Data to Picard."_

Almost looking grateful for the interruption, the captain said: "Picard here."

"_Captain, I have completed my scans of the Enterprise. I have located four corpses and a single Hitchcock predator within the internal framework of the ship."_

Riker caught Picard's frown. That was very specific, even taking into account the fact that it was Data talking. The inevitable leap had to be taken, and Picard took it with admirable calm.

"And _outside_ the confines of the ship?" he murmured.

"_My external scans have located six further Hitchcock predator life signs on the exterior hull of the ship." _That was Data. Utterly deadpan. He might as well have been telling them about a new menu in Ten-Forward, thought Riker, shifting uneasily in his seat. _"It is interesting, sir. The easiest way to effectively locate these creatures is to follow not standard life-form readings but localised fluctuations in the magnetic field."_

"Have you disconnected, Mr Data?"

"_Not yet, sir."_

That made sense, too. Data's voice had sounded crisper than usual: if he was tapping into the ship's communications systems directly there would be no interference.

"Can you tie into the transporters from your location?"

Pause. _"Yes, sir. Systems tied in."_

"See if you can get a lock and beam those bodies directly to -" Picard seemed to think for a moment. " - Cargo Bay Four. And try to tie up that creature inside with force fields until we can find a better solution. You're the only one who can currently perceive it with any clarity."

"_Aye, sir."_

Data sounded perfectly normal, as if being able to control parts of the ship with his own mind were a regular, even commonplace occurrence. Riker tried to imagine what it would be like to feel as if one's body was suddenly as big as the _Enterprise_, and failed. It would be like snapping your fingers to move a mountain, or blinking and seeing the sun wink off and on again. Data gearing up to throw force fields and transporter beams would be like flexing huge muscles he'd never had before. Like suddenly growing wings or an extra hand.

Picard's face was set. He stood and beckoned Riker with a look. "Well, Number One," he said softly, "time to chase the fox out of the henhouse."

"_Bridge to Captain Picard."_

"Go ahead."

"_Message from Starfleet Command, sir, in response to your communication."_

"I'll take it in here. No, Will, you can stay," Picard added as Riker made to leave. He looked grimly amused, and retook his seat. "Seeing as we're having some problems with our perceptions at present, it's probably best you listen to make sure we're in agreement about what's required."

As it turned out, the message was short, to the point, and almost entirely unlike what Riker had been hoping for. Picard's face grew grimmer and grimmer, and once the message concluded he tapped his combadge without any comment to his first officer.

_And what would I have been able to say, after all? _thought Riker. _Yes, sir, I heard that too?_

"PIcard to Data."

"_Data here, sir."_

"Make sure that…thing…isn't harmed," Picard muttered. "We've just had a communiqué from Starfleet Command, and our orders are clear. We're to take no physical action against the creatures on Hitchcock whatsoever."


	15. Chapter 15

How do you harm something that is, at its heart, ambulatory planet skin?

Data, nonetheless, sealed the creature into its hiding place with some carefully placed force fields and monitored the field strength and fluctuations scrupulously to ensure that there was never any danger of damage to their unwilling prisoner. The Hitchcock predator did not test the boundaries of what was now its cell. It lay quiet, moving only in short spurts upon occasion. To the casual observer, it would have been hard to believe that it was actually alive.

However, if there was ever anyone a long way removed from the position of casual observer, it was the Enterprise's second officer. Geordi had told him upon occasion (with that particular modulation to his voice that assured Data he was speaking humorously) that an attention to detail like _that_ was long overdue getting him serious attention in a psych report.

Data filed this away as another step in human relationships - the part where you feel you know somebody sufficiently well to be rude to them - and thought little of it otherwise. Detail was who he was, after all. Stating fact was hardly an insult. It was a constant source of interest to Data how sentient beings attached so many negative emotions to statements of fact.

Now detached from his umbilical to the mainframe, the android tapped his combadge.

"Data to La Forge."

"_Here, Data.__"_

"What is the status of the shield fluctuation modification?"

"_Almost done.__"_Geordi sounded a little strained. This was undoubtedly due to his being stuck inside one of the Jeffries tubes just off main engineering: Data knew precisely the panel. _"__I dunno, Data - this is a long way from scraping off interstellar barnacles.__"_

"I know," said Data, and heard Geordi chuckle. It took over sixty individual subroutines (and a further few years of patient observation) to allow the android to respond to a particularly human metaphor such as "interstellar barnacles" appropriately. Only Geordi really ever appreciated that effort. "However, I believe the principle to be sound."

It was. Even taking Starfleet Command's edict into account, it was the duty of the two officers to investigate suitable options to offer, and Geordi, who had been in the direct firing line of Data's grisly discovery outside the turbo lift, had been more than usually insistent on getting started on their posited solution to the creatures on the outer hull.

"_Sound. Right.__"_Geordi paused. _"__That__'__s if we__'__re allowed to test it. That__'__s if we__'__re allowed to defend ourselves against being flayed alive by these critters.__"_

Data didn't have an answer to that. Starfleet loyalty warred with what Noonien Soong would have termed "common sense". Common sense is one of those human qualities that is ridiculously hard to program, rather like ethics and romance. Still, Soong had got enough of it right that Data recognised the reactions in his friend for what they were, and also recognised that in all probability Captain Picard would be experiencing a similar reaction.

"Geordi," he said, after a moment, "I am going to the bridge. Please let me know once you have completed the work."

The doors swished closed on Geordi's _"__You got it.__"_

* * *

As Data was heading toward the bridge, Commander Riker was heading away from it, with Deanna in tow. As ever, Will found himself taking refuge in humour to try and dispel his more negative feelings. He jogged her elbow as they ducked into the lower aft corridors.

"You got your first contact hat on?"

Troi gave him a sidelong, half-smiling look that told him quite clearly his attempts to cover up his true feelings were cutting no ice with a part-Betazoid.

"Sometimes I don't understand why I'm supposed to be any better at first contact with alien races than anyone else," she said. "Even if I can sense the alien emotions, there's no guarantee that I'm interpreting them correctly. It's like being a toddler all over again. You experience the emotions from other people, but they're confusing until you learn the context."

"Well, you know what they say. A beautiful woman's welcome everywhere."

Troi managed to look professionally and serenely dismissive. They turned the corner into the corridor that led to the far aft cargo locker, where the gentle hum and flicker of Data's force field announced that they'd reached their destination.

Riker repeated the same thing he'd said to Picard earlier, when the captain had given the order to attempt communication with their unwelcome visitor. It was protocol. You gave the alien every chance to talk. Theirs was, after all, a mission of peaceful exploration.

"I feel that we've already tried talking to them," he said, as he reached for the door release. "On the planet, that is. All those illusions, they spoke to us."

"But that's exactly right. You spoke to illusions and they were treating you as if you were unaware. You may as well have been speaking to yourself. Here on the _Enterprise_, they cannot have that luxury."

The door behind the force field opened silently.

"Now we know them for what they are," Troi concluded, staring into the cargo locker, "and they know that we know. I believe I can feel something, but it's like the memory of a dream of a feeling. Nevertheless, I believe…that it knows it is trapped."

Not heartened, Riker cleared his throat. To him, the locker looked empty but for a stack of emergency evacuation supplies in neat sealed crates.

How do you address something that is, at its heart, a killer of your kind?

"I am Commander William Riker," he said loudly, feeling faintly ridiculous and sickened all in one horrible moment, "and I know you're in there…"

_Come out, come out, wherever you are…_

It sounded weak, even to him. He waited, resisting the urge to glance at Deanna. It would look to any predator like a need for support, and that sort of physical signal he could ill-afford, especially with all this prisoner's little buddies cluttering up the hull like limpet mines.

"I am here on behalf of the United Federation of Planets," he said after an excruciatingly long minute had passed, "and I wish to open discussions between our peoples. Please respond if you can understand me."

The force field rippled like a millpond across which a stiff breeze has blown, the electrons fizzing and sparkling; Deanna drew in a breath.

"I…Will, I think…"

And although Riker was almost expecting it, he still had to clamp iron control down onto the flinch that gripped his shoulders when before them both, out of apparently empty air, a familiar figure appeared in the locker.

It was the form of Ensign Hutchens, and he was smiling through a mask of blood.


	16. Chapter 16

Riker's eyes widened. No control in the world could have stopped all the physical indications that despite his silence shouted clearly that his skin was crawling, his heart thumping hard.

Ensign Hutchens was dead. This wasn't him. Ensign Hutchens was in the sickbay morgue, in stasis, and not even all of him was there, either. Half of him was still down on Hitchcock -

And then he realised. No. Some of Hutchens was likely still down on the planet, to be sure, but some of him really was here. In front of them. In the belly of that…that thing, if it had a belly in the traditional sense. This was one of the original murderers from Picard's beam-down.

They'd had murderers on the Enterprise before. Of course they had. They'd even had ones whom they'd invited in, accepted and put emotional investment into - Riker had to stop himself thinking about Lore - but this was something worse, something nastier.

This creature was trying to scare them. Deliberately and nastily. It could have presented as anything it wanted, but it had to choose the poor, maimed body of the dead man.

His anger growing, he felt Deanna touch his arm, very softly. Her quiet voice reached his ears.

"You can't be certain," she whispered. "Remember, we are as alien to them as they are to us. It may be trying to appear to us in a form it thinks we will welcome, that of a friend who was recently with us."

Riker forced himself not to look at her, to keep eye contact with the bloodied apparition instead.

"We know you're not really the man you're presenting us," he said, loudly, "but if you're comfortable talking this way, let's do so. What do you want aboard our ship?"

Hutchen's body swayed behind the force field, dripped gore into a puddle at his feet. He remained silent, and Riker fought his disgust.

_It__'__s not real, it__'__s not real. It__'__s in your head. Your mind is creating everything, including that widening pool of red, even down to the gleaming highlights in the blood that make it look so fresh and so viscous -_

His stomach turned.

"Please," he managed. "We need to talk with you. It's very important."

To distract himself, he started composing his report to Picard in his head. _No, sir, we tried everything, it__'__s a dumb animal and didn__'__t make any effort to communicate. In fact, it threatened us. Recommend we start that plan to destroy them immediately -_

There was a ghastly, clotted sound from behind the force field. Deanna became very still and withdrawn at his side.

The deathly smile on the face of the corpse was gone. Now the swollen lips were parted, and a rattle of voice escaping them.

Riker took half a step forward, his desire to make some sense out of this insanity overriding his horror and revulsion. "Try again," he urged.

Hutchens swayed, eyes blinking slowly, the lashes themselves stiff with blood.

"Help us," he said.

Will and Deanna shared a glance of disbelief.

* * *

On the bridge, Picard was looking at Data in slight alarm, and not because of what the android had been saying to him.

"Mr Data," he said, quietly, and Data stopped talking, his expression a mask of polite enquiry. "I think you'd better report to engineering. I'd like Geordi to take another look at you."

Data cocked his head. "Is something wrong, sir?"

Picard gave him a steady look, as if trying to work out what to say that wouldn't frighten or upset him: Data always appreciated that, even though he wasn't able to be frightened or upset. It was a confirmation of the fact that Picard always thought of him as a person first rather than a machine. Something was evidently wrong. He ran a deeper self-diagnostic immediately, then checked a number of minor but vital functions, and yellow eyes focused once more to meet Picard's gaze. The entire check had taken less than a second.

"Ah."

"Ah, indeed." The captain's combadge signalled, interrupting them.

"_Riker to Picard."_

"Picard here," said the captain, holding Data where he was for a moment with a gesture.

"_You'd better get down here, sir. Our visitor needs to talk with you."_

At almost the same moment, Data's badge chirped. _"Troi to Data," _said the counsellor's voice. _"It'd be helpful if you could join us at the force field. Having someone who can see past the illusion would be useful at this point."_

Data gave Picard an eloquent look. Picard nodded after a moment.

"On my way, Counsellor."

* * *

Visitor.

Riker's choice of words had been interesting, thought Picard as he and Data walked out of the lift and along the corridor towards the location of the force field. It was crucially non-antagonistic. It was _diplomatic_, even. Riker still had the potential to surprise his commanding officer with his ability to be all things to all men despite his own strength of feeling. And efforts to establish communications had evidently been successful, which admittedly made things a lot more complicated. He could almost hear his old Academy tutor's voice now: _Jean-Luc, you're going into Starfleet. We __**like **__things complicated here._

Picard spared a glance for Data, walking easily at his side. Thinking of the potential to surprise…the second officer would obviously still need watching. The fluctuations in power were evidently still giving him trouble. He'd blacked out while speaking to Picard on the bridge - simply shut down as still as a statue for almost thirty seconds without apparently realising, then continued talking quite fluidly as he was wont to do. An internal check of his built-in chronometer had evidently revealed the problem to the android - the expression that flicked across Data's face when his diagnostics knew more than his conscious functions did was always priceless, because it was a far more human expression of confusion than any he'd ever practiced.

However, Picard mused as Riker and Deanna came into view in front of them, he'd much prefer to avoid seeing that look on Data's face anytime again soon.

Behind the force field stood a nightmare vision that was hard to look at, and Picard found Data's quiet impassivity a great comfort at that moment.

A droplet of blood ran slowly down to the floor and joined a greater pool. Picard watched it, unable to dismiss it as what it inevitably was - an enforced hallucination.

"Mister Data," he murmured, trying not to let his distaste roughen his voice too much.

"The creature has come forward to the force field," said Data, perfectly matter-of-fact. "It appears on average smaller than the others I have seen. It remains static. I do not see anything else," he added, apparently as a well-meaning afterthought given the white, shocked faces of the other officers.

"Sometimes I really envy you, Data," said Riker, in an undertone. Picard, wrenching his gaze from the blood, met the eyes of the apparition.

"I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard, of Starfleet," he said. Mentally, he continued: _I have spoken to animate tar, giant insects, microscopic organisms…I can speak to a ghost. _"What do you want from me, from my ship?"

Hutchens lurched like a zombie from the golden age of human cinema, and that horrible clotted voice came clearly to the captain's ears.

"We want to be rescued, Captain Jean-Luc Picard. We ask for asylum."


	17. Chapter 17

_**Author's Note: Unforgivably short update is unforgivable. **_

* * *

"Asylum?"

Now, Riker knew, he would have sounded incredulous. Picard sounded merely curious, perhaps with a hint of irritation. _Irritation? People have __**died**__. _But there was the trick of it: a Starfleet captain's trick of keeping calm in the face of whatever, even if that whatever was a dripping corpse hiding the shape of a planetary predator.

"You'll have to forgive me my confusion," Picard was saying, folding one hand easily inside the other and tucking them both intro the small of his back before taking the few available paces in the space before the force field. "But it's difficult amongst my species to take a request for asylum as genuine when it comes from someone who uses subterfuge as their primary method of communication."

Hutchens blinked slowly, his dead eyes tracking the captain as he moved back and forth. A frown grew in bloodied lines across his forehead.

"We…don't understand."

Picard tilted a look over one shoulder, stopping at Data's side.

"You don't look the same to all of us," he said, softly. "And the actions of those of you we met on the planet were hardly the actions of those seeking our help."

"The creature is touching the force field," said Data, quietly, and Hutchens appeared to look at him. The force field still looked serenely undisturbed.

"Those of us you met on the planet are the reason we are seeking asylum, Captain Picard," came the harsh voice, and despite herself Deanna swallowed back her revulsion. A long strip of Hutchens' skin was beginning to peel down from the side of his face, like aging wallpaper in the damp. The movements of the jaw beneath had evidently been the last straw for the abused flesh. She could feel, flaring against a background of her own disgust, Will Riker's anger burning away his sickness at the sight.

She laid a hand on his arm, squeezing gently. Picard was saying:

"Asylum is usually granted to those living under threat of harm from an oppressive regime. Perhaps you can tell me about what you are seeking our protection from?"

Again a lengthy pause as the image of Hutchens seemed to try and make the thoughts move through the decaying morass of the dead brain. The illusion was complete - _and completely horrible_, Riker added in the privacy of his own head.

"And perhaps," Picard added, the gentleness of his tone utterly negated by the coldness in his eyes, "you could present yourself in some other fashion."

The air in the corridor was still, broken only by the occasional hum of the force field. The form of Hutchens gave a choked inhalation, cut off sharply -

The force field shuddered, only once. Riker drew in a breath and held it.

"Data," said Picard calmly, his manner unchanged, his tone lifted slightly in question. The android at his side tilted his head.

"Sir? The creature has not moved, sir."

"Captain Picard," said the creature, matching Data's vocal inflection as precisely as the illusion matched his form, "we are not the enemy. It is others who dictate the things that we have done, and it is those others we seek protection from."

Picard looked into the creature's yellow eyes. It looked like Data and it sounded like Data, and all he could think of was that implacable arm throttling the life from one of his crew. Unease clutched at him. The healed sites of his recent injuries began to ache.

Almost for reassurance, he looked to the real Data, who was standing unawares close at his side. He remembered then that of course Data couldn't see what they could: that to him the creature remained just that. A creature.

"Well," said Riker, almost as an aside to Deanna, "it's a helluva thing to say, but I think I almost preferred the corpse. This…this is…"

"Creepier?"

"Creepier. Yeah."

Data looked in at the creature and frowned, just a little: Deanna started to describe it for him.

* * *

"Sentient, yes. And with a plea."

Picard considered more tea, dismissed the idea, and instead picked up the padd from his desk to look over the orders. On the screen, the admiral shifted in his seat.

"I wish you'd stay still, Jean-Luc."

Picard, a quirk of smile pulling at his lips, glanced his way.

"In truth, I don't feel in much of a sedentary mood, Admiral. There is a being inside my ship who has killed my crew and yet is asking for asylum, with several of its friends attached to my hull. On the planet, a colony of these beings is systematically trapping and slaughtering visitors, and yet I am not permitted to take punitive action." He pointedly brushed imaginary dust from his sleeves. "I think that warrants my standing up for a while."

Laughter from the comm. "Old Academy trick, isn't it? Hold a meeting standing up and it'll take half the time because everyone misses their comfy chairs?"

"No trick this time, at least not on my part," said Picard. "I needed to ask you something."

"Ask. There's no price for asking."

"If it transpires that I am left with no options, other than kill or be killed - " Picard laid his hand flat on the table to his left - "what would Starfleet have me do?"

"The creatures are sentient. Your primary mission stands." The admiral leant forward pointedly. "Captain."

"Then I request an ambassador. A mediator."

"You're stalling, Jean-Luc."

"I am emotionally compromised," said Picard, blandly. "I have seen my crew murdered in front of me. I myself was almost killed. I am not your man for this."

The admiral sighed.

"And yet you are the only man for this."

Picard did not react. _Find out whether their barn's collapsed. And don't worry about getting crushed in the process._


End file.
